30 French warplanes blast Islamist targets

Thirty French warplanes on Sunday blasted Islamic extremist training and logistics centres in northeast Mali, just hours after President Francois Hollande visited the country, the military said.

Fighter jets, refuelling and reconnaissance planes took part in the "major" overnight operation in the Tessalit area north of Kidal, military spokesman Colonel Thierry Burkhard told
Kidal is the last bastion of radicals who occupied the desert north for months before France's surprise intervention.

Tessalit, near the border with Algeria, is believed to be where seven French nationals captured by Islamists are being held.

Hollande received a rapturous welcome in Mali on Saturday as he promised that France would stay as long as necessary to continue the fight against Islamist rebels.

He told Malians it was time for Africans to take the lead but that France would not abandon them.

Malian Foreign Minister Tieman Hubert Coulibaly said he hoped the French military operation in his country would continue.

"Faced with these hardened fighters whose arsenal must be destroyed, we hope that the mission will continue," he told France's Journal du Dimanche newspaper, adding that the "aerial dimension" of the campaign was particularly important

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on Tuesday that France plans to begin pulling troops out of Mali in March and in the meantime will continue to focus on flushing out Islamist militant havens in the north of the country.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on Tuesday that while France plans to begin pulling troops out of Mali in March, military operations in the country will continue to focus on driving Islamist militants out of the countryâ€™s desert north.â€œThe narco-terrorist groups have been stopped thanks to our strikes,â€ Fabius said. But there can still be individual acts. We have to stay on our guard.â€

Franceâ€™s military intervention first began on January 11 in an effort to help regain control of Islamist-held territory in northern Mali. Since operations started, French forces have pushed farther north, gradually moving out of cities and towns taken earlier in the campaign.â€œWith the size of the force we have here right now, we can maintain security in the town of Timbuktu,â€ he said. â€œThe departure of the French soldiers does not scare us, especially since their air force will still be present both in Timbuktu and Sevare. They control this entire zone and can intervene within a matter of minutes in order to carry out air strikes as needed.

We have killed 400+ militants for the loss of one Gazelle pilot, liberated every city and town of any size and destroyed their entire Mali network base. We get out in March, hopefully with no casualties and makes a perfect operation. Go to school future Super Powers, this is how to make an intervention. :thumb:

We have killed 400+ militants for the loss of one Gazelle pilot, liberated every city and town of any size and destroyed their entire Mali network base. We get out in March, hopefully with no casualties and makes a perfect operation. Go to school future Super Powers, this is how to make an intervention. :thumb:

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You ran a two week bombing campaign against a tribal lunatics with stones as anti aircraft weapons. And still lost a plane.